back to article NSA plans massive, 65MW, $2bn data center in Utah

The ultra-secretive National Security Agency plans to build a 1-million-square-foot data center in Utah as it seeks to decentralize its computing resources and tap regions with ample supplies of lower-cost electricity. When completed, the facility will require at least 65 megawatts of power and cost $1.93bn, according to news …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the Beat Goes On

    Basically the mass surveillance bandwagon will roll on and on. The NSA and GCHQ will continue to expand and gobble up data, power and money. Doesn't matter the public have never had a say in the matter. It doesn't matter if you vote red, white or blue, Obama or Bush, they all give in to the military-industrial complex.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And what is the end game?

    "Basically the mass surveillance bandwagon will roll on and on. The NSA and GCHQ will continue to expand and gobble up data, power and money."

    And what is the end game.... a small clique of people controlling the rest with a mass of computers and the money printing machine in their hands.

    Instead of 50000 people needed to control the populace, 5000, 500, 50.... 5....1?

    I wonder if the guys at the bottom can see the future they're creating. I wonder if the people who think they're in the 5000 can see that they won't be in the 500.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I tire of thy conspiracy.

    As has been witnessed in the UK, when the people tire of a leader (our useless, useless Gordon,) he goes.

    All the computers in the world don't win elections.

    (Out of interest, why isn't it "NSA and GCHQ" or "The NSA and The GCHQ" rather than "The NSA and GCHQ"? Should it not be just NSA, if it's GCHQ on purely grammatical doctrine?)

    Ps. Gordon says "I will fix this." I, and the rest of civilisation of the poll I did the other day can be extrapolated, are not saying "I don't want you to fix it Gordon", they're saying "I want you not to fix it Gordon"

    Are you getting the message Gordon? If not, the message is, "Please f*ck off and retire."

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Read this also

    http://www.sott.net/articles/show/188239-Making-official-what-they-ve-long-been-doing-The-Launching-of-U-S-Cyber-Command-CYBERCOM-

  5. jon 44

    I like money

    Let me build it for you!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    I am all for privacy and not having...

    anyone/government knowing my private business, but when you're at work, using work equipment, including networks, WAN, the use of said equipment should clue a person into the fact that it is not their private equipment.

    The CLUE is AT WORK.

    To summarize, work equipment NOT YOURS, reduced expectation of personal privacy.

    Beer, because I like beer.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    there already is a secret data center in Utah

    The LDS church has one, buried in a nice bombproof hole, to hold their genealogy database. It might be under Temple Square, in downtown Salt lake City.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @All the computers in the world don't win elections.

    Read up on the Mexico elections and Choicepoint. I wouldn't be so complacent.

    Not all attempts to keep control of power are as ham fisted as the new Shahs of Iran.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Their real objective....

    .....is to find out Dooce's home address.

    I already know it!

    AC and black helicopters for bleedin' obvious reasons.

  10. asdf
    WTF?

    haha utah

    Of course they chose Utah for this project. A lot of people in this wacky state are trained to be completely docile to their religious "prophets" (can't have shepards without sheep). As a result you have the scary example of a majority of the population in the state being right wing nuts following blindly what any in vogue crackpot says (Utah is always one of the top two or three Republican states in the country as well as the scam central of USA). Hell if you are going to shoot 17 Iraqis randomly and with no alleged provacation then turning yourself into the feds in Utah also makes perfect sense (Blackwater knows which way the winds blow). Still its a shame really because other than the politics, religions (Utah also very friendly to other wacky religious cults) and retarded drinking laws Utah is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I guess it is just too bad the Mormons mistaked the Great Salt Lake for the ocean and settled there (Utah joke).

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    65MW! What about global warming?

    What about the global warming propaganda? That the Obama administration will build this energy consuming monster shows that they are acknowledging that the whole global warming thing is a just a massive tax scam.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Relax

    It's not a Gov't + Religion conspiracy. It's a sensible economic move combining cheap land, power, and other local resources. NSA isn't the evil archetype presented in the movies, its an agency of people, like you and me, working to keep Joe Average safe from some very real enemies. Go back to sleep, ignore those black SUV's pulling up and red dots moving about the walls.

  13. Heff
    Go

    megawhat?

    Want to see UPS plans for a 65MWH, even the capacitors for the minute or so it would take a bloody huge diesel generator to kick in would be interesting. Is 65MW the magic numer, though? at what point does your UPS/emergency system have to constitude a small powerstation in its own right? how long before Darpa boffins are building collossal holding lakes and Hydroelectric dams for on-demand power? and then how long before they propose building overcapacity into that dam, in order to provide a tick-over they can resell back into the grid, to offset the ludicrous cost of building it.

    Either way, building huge data warehouses that'll generate a thermal footprint you can probably see from space doesnt seem Ze Smert, so defense and ethics considerations aside, Im totally interested by the mechanics.

    "proceed with this nonsense at flank speed", cos, well...

  14. Steve X
    Thumb Up

    Re:megawhat

    At those levels they probably use flywheel UPS, a few tons of steel spinning at high speed will ride out 10-15 second outages, and that's long enough to get a generator running if it's warm & ready. I've seen such setups where hot water from the aircon system is circulated through the diesels to keep them ready for an instant start

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Relax

    "It's a sensible economic move combining cheap land, power, and other local resources. NSA isn't the evil archetype presented in the movies, its an agency of people, like you and me, working to keep Joe Average safe from some very real enemies."

    Say an average server can record the data for 100 actions per second (e.g. web page, call dialled etc.). And the average person does 1000 recordable actions a day.

    $2 billion / $1000 a blade = say 1 million blades + same in running costs.

    = enough capacity to monitor 8 billion peoples transactions.

    Seems to me there are an AWWWFFFFUUULL lot of 'real enemies' the NSA is monitoring there, the entire planet and then some. I don't doubt NSA is stuffed full of low level, well meaning people, but at the end of the day, so is the Chinese Secret Police, or the Iranian Religious Police... or even the dotty UK housewives that report every suspicious tourist because the MET tells them terrorists takes photos.....

    All a bunch of low level people who think they're doing the right thing because they are told it is right.

    You know what, I saw a TV program the other day that shocked me. Some nutter was proposing a conspiracy theory about the UK tube bombs, he pointed out that the official claims that the terrorist were on a particular train, but that train was cancelled that day.

    What shocked me was the TV reporter asking whether this person should be allowed to forment 'dissent' by making these claims. So presumably the reporter only ever reports the official government line? You just don't expect phrases like that from a reporter. From a Chinese Government spokesman yes, not a reporter. The idea that someone should be prevented from pointing out these things because it may encourage dissent.....

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    They can't buy Intel or AMD processors

    Intel is made in China and Korea while AMD is Germany. Looks like the NSA will have to buy Power chips which are made in the USA. Happy 4th!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Give it a break already

    When news breaks that China has been running spy networks internationally, that the US electrical grid has been hackeck, that sensitive data was stolen from defense contractors, etc breaks, everyone complains that the government doesn't invest enough in defensive and offensive IT capability.

    When they do invest in such a capability it's all black helicopters and big bad brother. Truth is with emerging tech superpowers like Russia and China, you need these capabilities. So the NSA can see your tax return. So an e-mail you sent to Uncle Bob is put through a filter looking for certain keywords. Who gives a flying tard about your mundane personal life?

    Much preferable to my cc info being compromised in a massive hack of a US corportion, or my electricity (and the nation's defenses) being compromised by some Chinese fellas in white lab coats.

    I know it's not a popular view, but your paranoia of government isn't always necessarily justified.

    My 2p

  18. kain preacher

    hmmm

    Intel is made in China and Korea while AMD is Germany. Looks like the NSA will have to buy Power chips which are made in the USA. Happy 4th!.

    Every been to Santa Clara,ca Chandler ,Az. Some needs to tell those folks to stop making Intel.

    chips

    AMD chips are also made in Austin Tx.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Give it a break already

    "When news breaks that China has been running spy networks internationally, that the US electrical grid has been hackeck, that sensitive data was stolen from defense contractors, etc breaks, everyone complains that the government doesn't invest enough in defensive and offensive IT capability."

    I see this traffic,it's a nuisance, I block it, it's my job. Trouble with doing that 'exaggerated threat' to an IT professional is they know it's bollocks.

    Give it a break already. This budget is so far beyond the actual money required to do the actual job.

  20. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    @Give it a break already

    Russia and China hacking into the US electrical grid? Why bother? All they need to do is sell a few more AC units and electrical goods and the thing'll collapse on its own anyway. It's not as if the boards that manage the grid components give a stuff about anything other than shareholder return.

    If the defense contractors can't maintain a secure network (which generally involves segragation, not lumping everything into a single MS windows domain with access to the Internet), then they shouldn't be allowed to win contracts. However, again, we all know how these contracts are really won... With a secure network, most leaks are accidental or an inside job - a big computer elsewhere in the country isn't going to help massively here. A track of contacts between PC systems may do the job, however there are a HUGE number of ways to communicate on the Internet without using direct connections, e-mail, IM or anything easily traceable. A foreign security agency is likely to be very used to using these alternatives and is likely just laughing at the absurdity.

  21. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Thumb Down

    Scope & Feature creep anyone?

    There are *always* plenty of good reasons to spy on your population (as long as you don't look too closely at them).

    And certain types of Civil Servant are highly adept at thinking up more.

    And as for "Keeping Government data safe over private networks."

    Why send it over a private network? If you have to what are all those border routers doing between govt & private network *doing*?

    No need to ask. No need to know.

  22. Anonymously Deflowered

    Computing power

    Interesting. How much computing power does 65MW of electricity buy?

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    North Yorkshire ??

    Where abouts ???

  24. Clive Summerfield
    Black Helicopters

    Re: North Yorkshire??

    >> Where abouts ???

    RAF Menwith Hill, an alleged part of ECHELON, located near Harrogate.

  25. Secretgeek
    Joke

    It takes a lot of power...

    ...to run those Stargates, and it looks like they must have found another one.

    Sorry, the icon should probably say 'Bad Joke Alert'.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Joke alert

    I believe reps for that nice Van Staten bloke, who disappeared from Utah, may have just such a facility available. Slightly used, some repairs necessary......

  27. Dave Daurelle
    FAIL

    Not a secure location

    This is being sited about ten miles from the major fault in the Salt Lake area, and if I remember correctly, is sitting it on one of the smaller ones. The last major slip in the area included (still visible) a 50 foot (~16 meter) vertical displacement along the Wasatch front.

    Like Seattle, Salt Lake is waiting for "the next big one". Placing such a large facility within this proximity to the fault is, perhaps, not that wise a decision.

  28. Cortland Richmond

    Nor any drop todrink

    Water cooled?

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